


again (and again)

by Diaphenia



Category: The Mindy Project
Genre: Death, F/M, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-14
Updated: 2014-02-14
Packaged: 2018-01-12 08:15:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1183977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diaphenia/pseuds/Diaphenia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Ok, weirdo,” she pulls back, looks him over. “I’ll see you.”</p><p> “Yeah,” he says.  </p><p> They never do again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	again (and again)

**Author's Note:**

> With much love to Rikyl and Rodarawr.

He helps Mindy with that letter to Cliff. She gets him seltzer water, and the flight is smooth. He almost says something to her at the baggage claim, but Cliff’s waiting for her at the airport with a goddamn teddy bear, and she twirls in his arms.

Their wedding is the following spring, and Mindy looks like a reality TV star, gaudy with too much goop on her face. She smiles with all her teeth as she walks the aisle toward her future husband. The reception is lousy, but there’s whiskey, and that’s all that matters.

Danny and Mindy continue to work together for another decade until she and Cliff decide to move back to Boston to help her parents.

The office throws her a goodbye party that Danny almost skips, but the receptionist, Madison, drags him bodily. They invite everyone who ever worked there, people who long ago had the good sense to leave. It’s the first time he’s seen Morgan in five years, and Morgan’s all smiles and hugs and affection, but it’s nice to see him, so Danny hugs him back.

“Man, I can’t believe Dr. L’s leaving. Have you seen her baby girl? That kid’s amazing!” Morgan says, holding up a crayon drawing.

Of course he’d seen Mindy's kid, though from a distance every time. “What’s that supposed to be? That’s not even anything.”

“No, it’s me on a horse.”

“It isn’t. Horses don’t have six legs.”

Danny never quite manages to get over to Mindy to say goodbye, so she corners him by the hot pipe room.

“It’s been real,” she says, lightly punching his arm.

“You take care of yourself,” he says, pulling her into a big hug. She seems surprised but relaxes into the hug, and for one moment, Danny wonders what would’ve happened if he’d told her the truth, back when the truth might have mattered. He’s seen her and Cliff together; always smiling, the two of them, but there’s a strain to Cliff’s smile, and he’s been known to shoot nasty looks at anyone who so much as looks at his wife. “Promise me you’ll take care of yourself.”

“Ok, weirdo,” she pulls back, looks him over. “I’ll see you.”

“Yeah,” he says.

They never do again.

***

“Mindy!” he yells across the courtyard. “Mindy!” He couldn’t believe it. He’d been searching for her since puberty, when the dreams he felt so guilty about switched from vague female forms to one particular woman. A woman he had never met, a woman who had to be real. He’d been so certain she was real, that he’d known her once.

She squints at him before breaking away from her gaggle of ladies. She crosses over, primly proper in her Jackie O outfit, down to the white gloves, but it’s her. He’s been looking for her for so long, two lifetimes in fact, and he’s finally found her.

She slaps him sharply. “I don’t know how you got my name, but I don’t know you.”

This was not a possibility he’d prepared for. “I _do_ know you, though.”

She rubs her hand, like his face hurt her. “I’ve never met you,” she says, but there’s a hesitation now, and he knows he’s got her attention.

“We’ve never met. I still know you, though; you’re the girl who’s here for the MRS degree, but you’re smart, too. You hide it from the boys, try to convince them that your talents are domestic, but you can’t even cook a bird. If you only would apply yourself you could do great things, but you won’t, because you’ve been lied to and told all your life you can only do one thing.”

She looks at him, her eyes wide. “Are you even a student here? You seem closer to my father’s age than mine.”

He hands over his student ID. “Can I walk you to class?”

“Yes, _Daniel_ ,” she says, handing him back his ID. He swears he feels a spark, even through those gloves. He wants to see her hands. Those hands once brought life into the world, and he longed to have her remove her gloves.

They spend the semester together, helping each other study biology. She’s not exactly the same as she’d been the last time he’d known her, but she was still witty and sharp-tongued. She never recognizes him, but that’s fine— less to overcome to win her over. He thinks about kissing her, removing the book from her lap, open to a photo of the human heart, and just laying one on her, but he holds back. She lets him call on her regularly, and he swears she sometimes stares at his lips, but he’s waiting on her for a signal.

She goes home for Christmas, and he gets a letter from her that spring. She’s not returning to college because she’s engaged to a man from home. She would finish school, but it’s important to Sam that she keep house once they’re married. She encloses a picture of the two of them, -and Danny folds it and pins the Mindy half up on his bulletin board, only looking at it when he comes back from his runs.

***

Being a falconer to the King is a great responsibility, especially to one as determined as Henry to make sure everyone thinks he had a huge dick.

Mindy is a maid of honor to the Queen. He sees her often, following behind Her Grace when the Queen attends the King’s hunting parties. She never shoots a thing, which is probably good for everyone involved, though he’s offered to teach her.

Danny knows Mindy wants the King, and His Majesty has been known to make eyes at her, too. It’s disgusting, and Her Majesty must hate it, too, but there Mindy is, dancing with the King in full view of everyone.

“You cannot continue with this foolishness,” he hisses at her later during La Volta, a new continental dance that has swept the court.

“Bessie had success, and so will I,” she says, haughtily.

“Your mistress will hate you.”

“But the people will love me,” she says, turning. He pulls her back, close, and lifts her up.

She shivers in his arms. He thinks, briefly, that she relishes the close contact, but her upper lip is beaded with sweat despite the night’s chill, and he knows.

He hasn’t been a doctor in many lifetimes, but still he tends to her. There’s little to be done for the sweating sickness, but he covers her with blankets and brings her water. He tends to her through the night, and she falls asleep just before dawn. He does everything he can to wake her, but she’s sluggish, and by mid-morning, she’s gone.

He buries her with his precious medallion of St. Raphael.

***

Hollywood was full of phonies, and Mindy was their new queen. He’d seen her up close at a party; everything about her was slightly off, from the hairline she’d had sculpted with electrolysis to the girdle he knows she’s wearing, pushing her curves into the sort that make a girl popular. He’s even heard that she’s undergoing treatments to lighten her skin, and he thinks it’s a real shame.

He’s gone to her movies each a dozen times, and on screen she’s beautiful, though he misses hearing her voice, and he can’t believe how much he misses the voice he once loathed.

He meets her on a ship. She’s trying, not very hard in his opinion, to obscure her identity using sunglasses and scarves, but everyone knows it’s her. He’s the only gent brave enough to approach her.

She slaps him.

The next night, they’re seated together for supper, and this time, he starts with a compliment.

The two of them talk for hours, and he tells her she looks better without all that pancake on her face. She wipes it off for him, and seeing _her_ again is better than seeing her in a million picture shows.

The two of them make love that night, the first time in six lifetimes, and Danny thinks he might die of happiness.

Instead, he dies after giving her his spot on the lifeboats, remaining on deck while he watches her leave. The band plays a mournful tune, and he promises her, _next time_.

***

They write each other letters during the war.

It’s not enough, but he swears he can smell her perfume, just faintly, and it gets him through those long nights without her.

They stay tucked into his pack, except for the most precious one, where she accepted his proposal. That one is in his breast pocket. She says it will offer him protection, and after several close calls, he’s inclined to agree with her.

Then he takes a musket ball to the leg. He knows to request sanitized equipment and demands the idiot they call the doctor wash his hands first, though there’s not much they can do to stop the pain. He’s transferred to a local home to recover, and there he remains for three long months.

Mindy’s letters stop, and he doesn’t know why. Still, he writes to her dutifully. He longs for her so much more now that he’s not fighting. It seems a waste, but he’s still having trouble walking.

When the town doctor tells him he’s healthy enough to return home, he thinks only of his fiancee. The train is cramped and the bumps make his leg throb, but he’s got her letters to reread and a bottle of gin.

When he shows up at her door, she faints dead away.

He cradles her to his chest until she wakes. It’s only when she puts out a hand to accept a drink that he realizes the ring she wears isn’t the one he gave her.

“I sent a letter,” she says, and she pulls out the letter from the chest at the end of her bed. “They said you had died. They said I was alone. Again.”

Danny can see where she got that impression, as letter did state that he’d died in the battle that had wounded him.

He panics. “What, and now you’re just engaged to someone else?”

“And what should I have done? You had passed.”

“I didn’t. I’m here, with you.” He grabbed her hand, cradling it in his own. He remember’s proposing to her, he, a poor soldier, and she, an orphan caring for her brother, and how he’d grabbed her hand just like this.

There’s a spark of recognition, and he knows she remembers that proposal as well.

But she looks away. “He’s a good man.”

“No—”

“He’s a minister, and he wants to marry me. I’m going to be a minister’s wife.”

“You’re going to be _my_ wife. We are going to be married in the spring.”

She shakes her head. “No—”

“Yes, in your Sunday best, and I’m to wear a lilac on my lapel because that’s the soap you use—”

“I’m so sorry,” she says, her voice firm. “I’m already promised to him, and you must think of the scandal.”

Mindy, no matter when, always worries about what everyone thinks. It will not be the first time he has lost her due to public opinion.

Before he leaves, he asks her for the ring back. It’s only reasonable, as he’s leaving town immediately. Perhaps there’s a place for a half-lame former soldier somewhere further north.

She pulls out a scrap of leather tied around her neck. There, close to her heart, is the ring he once gave her.

***

Mindy asked for his help on the letter to Cliff, and Danny realizes this happened before. Not just the letter—he’d helped Mindy with dozens of letters over as many lifetimes, several of them to attractive lawyers—but this happened before, exactly like this.

There was a first time they were doctors together in New York. It all comes back to him in a blinding rush of clarity: meeting as residents, when she was on her way in and he was on his way out. He thought she was a bubble-head, and she seemed to relish needling him. When she showed up at the practice three years later, determined to be his best friend, he almost quit. Instead, he watched her date a parade of morons and low lifes, watching her romantic failures until—it really bothered him how she _changed_ for these guys, when she was already great. And realizing she didn’t want him to change had lead to some very awkward realizations that he already liked her as she was, god help him.

But she’d married someone else, that first time they were doctors, and this evening with her on the plane had been his last opportunity.

She apologizes to him, for the things that had happened in the desert.

“And I’m sorry about what I said about Cliff. You weren't lucky to be with him, he was lucky to be with you.” He takes a deep breath. “Any guy would be lucky to be with you.”

“That’s true,” she says. “Hot doctor who recently lost three pounds? Who wouldn’t want that?”

“That’s not what I meant. For one thing, that’s probably all water weight. But more importantly, I can’t believe someone would let you slip from his fingers. He’s a real idiot.”

“No, I am. Because Cliff’s great, and I’m—”

“Amazing. You’re amazing.” He grabs her hands.

“Oh,” she says. “Are you—”

He leans over and kisses her. It’s awkward, sitting next to her on a plane with the armrest between them, but she _clutches_ him, and that’s all that matters.

“Mindy,” he says hoarsely, “I have never been so lucky, not in a thousand lifetimes.”

“Ok, lil’ Shakespeare,” she says, her voice affectionate. “I get it, you’re into this bod. No need to be melodramatic.”

He wonders if he could tell her the truth: they’ve lived and relived their lives at least that many times. That he always remembered her and she never remembered him, and that he’s long ago decided that doesn’t matter. That he has to keep trying with her because the one thing he always remembers is that he had a chance with her once, and he blew it. That he’s never told her the truth before.

He wonders if telling her would break the cycle. Perhaps they could both find out what happens next.

She snuggles into him, and he thinks it doesn’t matter if they live forever, together and apart, as long as he has this time with her.


End file.
